Meryl Streep Reveals the Story Behind Her Unusual Name

The name Meryl Streep is so deeply embedded in pop culture, particularly in filmography, that no one really questions it. Meryl Streep, the name, is just kind of a given, as the title of the greatest-living actress and the woman currently rallying Hollywood’s higher-ups to actually acknowledge gender inequality within the industry. But 60-some years ago, Meryl Streep was a somewhat rare moniker, and the New Jersey girl stuck with it absolutely “haaaaaaated” it.

While on The Graham Norton Show promoting Suffragette, Streep indulged the audience in the story behind her unusual nickname, and her birth name, Mary Louise.

“At birth I had to be named Mary because my mother’s name was Mary and her mother’s name was Mary and [so on],” Streep explained. “I named my first daughter Mary because I [wanted] to make everybody happy in the family, basically. So I was born Mary and Louise was my mother’s best friend. . . Louise Buckman. So I was named after her. But I was always called Meryl. My father made that name up and he liked that name.”

Streep, as we mentioned before, did not so much.

“I haaaaaaaated it,” Streep said. “I wanted to be named Patty or Cathy. But I had glasses, and my name was Meryl, and [my last name] had a ‘p’ on the end. It should have been ‘Street.’ [I always thought], ‘Why didn’t they just put a ‘t’ on the end instead of ‘p’?’”

Rehashing her childhood resentments of her name, Streep started to look a little worked up. Seeing her frustration, Norton did his best to reassure Streep that “Patty Street” wouldn’t have had the same ring to it.

”You would have been such a different person if you’d been brought up as Patty, wouldn’t you?” he asked.

“Yeah, probably,” Streep admitted after a few beats.

Streep wasn’t alone on the talk show, though. She was joined by Carey Mulligan and Nicole Kidman, the latter of whom revealed she had an even more curious birth name story.

Born in Honolulu, Kidman’s parents gave her a Hawaiian name in addition to Nicole—Hokulani—which means “heavenly star.” Beautiful right? Somewhat less beautiful, Kidman shared, was that her parents named her for a baby elephant born at the Honolulu Zoo the same time as the future Oscar winner.